Adolph Hyla

Adolf Hyła (May 2, 1897 – December 24, 1965) was a Polish painter and art teacher. He is known for painting a popular version of the "Divine Mercy image" in 1943.

Hyła was born in Bielsko-Biała, the son of Józef and Salomea, and his brother Antoni (1908–1975) was a sculptor. Adolf attended school in Kraków from 1903–1912, then in Khyriv, where he graduated in 1917. He studied figure painting and with Jacek Malczewski. In 1918–1920, he served intermittently in Polish Army, where around that time he worked in the office of the National Kilimkarni. In 1922, he studied art history and philosophy at Jagiellonian University. He taught drawing at a junior high school in Będzin between 1920–1948, teaching practical work in secondary schools in Kraków. He passed his two Fine Arts teaching classes, one in Cracow in 1930, and in 1936 at the Institute in Warsaw crafts exam for practical teaching. Hyła taught drawing and handicrafts at Mikołaj Kopernik Private School around 1934.

Hyła painted the Divine Mercy image for the Divine Mercy Sanctuary, Kraków, as a votive offering for having survived World War II. The image was painted by Hyła five years after the death of Saint Faustina Kowalska in 1938, under direction of her confessor Józef Andrasz. It is slightly based on an earlier 1934 image by Eugeniusz Kazimirowski, the painting of which was supervised by Kowalska herself and her another confessor Michał Sopoćko. Hyła's initial version had a country landscape behind Christ, but this was deemed "non-liturgical" and was subsequently edited out of the second, more familiar rendition.

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